Four Portraits One Jesus Class

One member is examining the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from a biblical perspective viewpoint when Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism research ministry since 1979 Mormonism research ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's viewpoint on Mormonism so glad to be with us for this additional viewpoint on Mormonism.

I'm your host Bill McKeever Felder director Mormonism research ministry with me today is Eric Johnson. My colleague at MRM. If you listen to the show for any amount of time you know that we are very concerned about how many Latter Day Saints after leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints tend to go off into agnosticism or atheism. One of the reasons why we think that's true, is because the well of the Bible has been poisoned and, therefore, when a person starts doubting the truth claims of the LDS church.

They don't usually start looking at the truth claims mentioned in the Bible because they've already been told that the Bible cannot be trusted as we know.

Article 8 in the articles of faith teaches its people that they believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly and as we've explained many times on this show. What that really means is that the Bible has been in their view transmitted inaccurately over the years. So even if you had a good translation of the Bible in their minds. It would be a good translation of a bad transmission. Because of this lack of faith in the Bible. Many Latter Day Saints tend to gravitate towards the popular atheists. And that's why I think we see so many of them drift off into that category and never come to believe the Bible as it was to be understood. What is you can also understand we are very concerned about this and this is why on our homepage. We have an icon that shows a man that looks like he's struggling and that's done on purpose with the question, are you struggling with your Mormonism and on that page.

If you were to click that icon you would find a lot of references there that we think could help Latter Day Saints answer a lot of the questions that they have when they leave the Mormon church. One of the books that we have listed on there is a book that came out it was it came out back in 2007. It's not a real new book but it was written by a friend of ours Dr. Mark Strauss. We've had Mark on this show before, but Mark has written an excellent resource titled for portraits one.

Jesus tell us a little bit about this book while the subtitle is an introduction to Jesus in the Gospels. This is a book that has been used in college classes all over the world to help people understand where the Gospels come from in and so what in this book he is giving you were talking 500 pages so it's at the college textbook, but it's written in a way that is understandable. I think the average Christian who reads normal. What kinds of literature I think would be able to understand this.

Certainly there are some higher level issues like for instance he does get into some of the historical critical methods of gospel research as well as the literary critical methods of gospel research. I can get kinda deep. He covers that in chapters 2 and three but it needs to be covered because there's all kinds of different ways that people have interpreted the Gospels and so you need to take a look at how people have attacked the Gospels as far as understanding where the resources come from where the origination of the Gospels come from, but I think the hardest chapters or chapters 2 and three, but then keep in part two covers the setting of the Gospels and so he's going to give us the historical setting. The religious setting in this social and cultural setting of the Gospels, I think so many people will read their Bible and not remember that this took place 2000 years ago when they read the Gospels, you have to understand all about first century Judaism. You have to understand the Roman government. You have to understand what Jesus was saying and what it meant to the people of that day for you to make a proper interpretation and application for what was said in the Gospels.

You have to understand those things are you to make critical errors because you contextualize it into the 21st century, you're bound to come up with wrong interpretations of what was originally meant.

We certainly see that, especially with a lot of young college students that they tend to judge history based on their 21st-century presuppositions, which I think is totally unfair and inaccurate, but what does he have to say regarding the person of Christ that we think that Latter Day Saints should know the reason why ask this is because I'm shocked at how many times I've had members of the LDS church tell me they don't even believe Jesus is God and I find that to be fascinating because in Mormonism the official position of the LDS church as they certainly do believe that Jesus is a God the father is a God, and the Holy Ghost is a God. Three gods within one Godhead. I can understand if they didn't want to believe in the Trinitarian formula regarding Jesus's deity, but for a Mormon to say they don't believe Jesus is God I think goes against the grain of even the book of Mormon. He does take a look and the last part of this book all the historical Jesus and consider what scholars have said over the years, especially the 19th century because we have what are called the first quest of the historical Jesus, we have Albert Schweitzer who wrote a book and who we thought he was. So we have a lot of scholarly opinions over the years and he takes a look at that trying to discover get beyond the scholarly talk and find out what is really real and and so with that he's able to talk about things such as the historical reliability of the Gospels. That's often attacked by her Mormon friends who will say well how to how can even trust those are the words of Jesus are certainly the liberal critics will say that I we find so often bill when somebody leaves Mormonism they start quoting popular atheists and giving us the same kind of quotations that we could read from their books and their call the new atheists.

But the Bible in the Gospels, in particular have a reliability. We have so much information to help us know.

I believe in early dates for the four Gospels.

Some liberals would take it into later years, but I think there's good evidence that Mark Strauss is able to show that there is a reason why we can trust with the Gospels are as actually, the true stories of what Jesus said and did. Now you've gone through this book and you were so impressed by the things that Mark is included in this book that you are planning on holding a class using this book as the textbook wanted to explain a little bit about that because we have talked with Sandra Tanner and she's going to allow you to use her bookstore. There's actually a room upstairs that seats about 50 people and you're going to be holding the class up there and it's going to be dealing with this subject.

In one of the reasons why we want to do this is because we know that there are a lot of people who were coming out of Mormonism who want a lot of their questions answered. They are not quite ready to throw away faith. They have some sincere questions that I think should be answered. You're hoping to answer a lot of those questions regarding the person of Christ and the reliability of the gospel want you tell us about that.

I taught a Gospels class and at the college level. In San Diego, where I'm from. For several years and I wish I would've had this textbook.

The textbook was not written when I actually did that probably about 15 years ago, but this book as you said, I'm very impressed with this friend of ours Mark Dr. Mark Strauss who is very evangelical but he's going to give you the whole picture and I find that a lot of people who end up leaving Mormonism don't really have a high regard of the Bible and especially the Gospels. Well, if were going to as evangelical Christians say it's all about Jesus. I think we have to have reasons why we can trust the Gospels that we have in our possession. Matthew Mark Luke and John. So what I would like to do starting the first week of September is to be able to have a class it's a free class and I realized for those who are not in the Salt Lake Valley area. They're not can be able to attend. If you live in outside states, but if you live in the Salt Lake Valley area and you wanted to dedicate this next year starting September going all the way through May every other Tuesday night in order to go from 7 PM to 8:45 PM I'm going to facilitate the class. I don't want to say teach the class because yes, I'll be there doing a lot of teaching. But I would like to have group participation in the class and for people to have read the different chapters is a total of 20 chapters chapters that deal with Jesus's birth and childhood. The message of Jesus. The miracles of Jesus the death of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus.

All these different chapters will focus on a different aspect of the Gospels. I think if people would be willing to go through this that their faith is going to be strengthened and so this is not just for people who are Latter Day Saints, but for people who have just left the church, or if you've never been part of the Mormon church.

We are inviting you to join this free class and if you want to find out the information at the top of our website MRM.org. There's a link to this class or if you just go to MRM.org/fall class with the hyphen between falling class and the way you sign up for this class is you just need to go to the website. It has my email there you would email me and your commitment to me is you're going to come regularly as often as you can to the class you're going to read the chapters that are assigned and you're willing to participate in in the discussions that were going to have and so this is going to take place. As you mentioned Sandra Tanner's Utah lighthouse bookstore. Sandra is not going to officially participate in the class, but it will be at her bookstore which is right across the street from Smith's ballpark where the bees play and you're going to be able to park in the parking lot.

Or you can park on the street and every other Tuesday night. The schedule is on the website MRM.org/fall class and were going to talk about all kinds of things having to do with Jesus. I think your faith would be strengthened if you were willing to put the time and I think it would be good. Also for Christians to listen to a class like this because you be surprised at how many things you may have not realize before that are brought out in this book that Mark brings out and that you're going to elaborate on that we could use in a witnessing situation Christians what were trying to do is encourage believers to be prepared to give that answer that we are instructed to give regarding the hope that lies within us, and it means that we need to take the time and accept the responsibility that the Lord wants us to be good at what we believe and what I mean by that. To be able to articulate what we believe in a way that's easy for people to understand. This is why we often encourage people to have a very concise description of what the Trinity is habit overruled concise explanation of what the gospel is a class like this would certainly help you and we know that those of you that don't live in the area certainly are not going to be able to attend something like this, but by all means, if you have the opportunity to look at this book, you can get it on Amazon it's it's not a cheap book. It is a textbook is about $34 for the hard copy but you can get the Kindle version for $7.07 dollars for a book that's what over 500 pages long.

That is a lot of information and probably you would agree with me that it would be well worth your money to invest in something like this in the class were also going to have a video every week as Mark will talk for about 15 minutes eager to hear from Marquise and actually teach us in the first part of the class and then were going to dissect this. I have some power points that I'll be able to supplement the material with the questions that you might have. The book is well written.

As far as the textbook goes because our questions at the back and we may ask people to go through those questions in order to try to answer as much as possible, but I'm an essay whether you can attend this class or whether you just gonna read the book on your own I would.

I would recommend a book like this because the more you understand about where the Bible came from and why we can trust what it says. I think the better you're going to be in the evangelism you do, but if you are thinking about this seriously, we need to hear from you.

So again, go to our website MRM.org/fall-class or you can go to the top of our website MRM.org you can go through there and look at what this class is going to offer and you're going to have the opportunity to sign up by writing me an email